Live-blogging President Obama's big criminal justice reform speech to NAACP

After having waited a few hours for Prez Obama to finally make it to the podium at the NAACP's 106th National Convention, he is finally now, just short of 5pm ET, getting start with a widely-anticipated speech about the need for crimnal justice reform.  After sitting here waiting, I will do some live-blogging just to make the wait feel worthwhile:

Speech starts with praise for NAACP's work and then turns to problems and deficiencies facing minority youth, "our children, America's children."  But today, says Prez Obama, he wants to focus on our criminal justice system and the impact it has on minority populations and the "long history of inequity in the criminal justice system in America."

Notes that the "eyes of more Americans have been openned" to truths about America's criminal justice system.  Notes that "our incarceration rate is four times higher than China's" and that our prison poluation has quadrupled since 1980.  But "we need to be honest that ... there are some folks who need to be in jail .... murderers, predators, drug kingpins."  Not evidence that tougher sentences have contibuted to crime decline, but that it reaches a point of diminishing return.  Focus on distinguishing violent offenders from non-violent, drug offenders.

States "in far too many cases, the punishment does not fit the crime."  And we are spending $80 billion on incarceration --- an amount that would allow universal preschool or doubling the salary of all teachers.  "For what it costs in incarceration for one year, we could eliminate cost of tuition at all the public universities and colleges."  Praise for Rand Paul saying we spend too much on non-violent drug offenders with no public safety benefit.

There are cost that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, says Obama, as he turns to a discussion of racial disparities and the impact on communities of color.  This is not just anecdote, statistics bear out disparities at every stage of criminal justice processing.

"Mass incarceration makes our country worse off and we need to do something about it!"  The good news is that Republicans and Democrats agree on the need for reform, with "Van Jones and Newt Gingrich" and "NAACP and Koch Brothers" working on reforms.

Finishing speech by laying out basic principles in three areas: (1) in the community, (2) in the courtroom, and (3) in the cellblock.  

In the community: if we make investments early in our children, we save money in the future on criminal justice costs.  Investing in our community saves taxpayer money if we are consistent about it.  Stresses that we need to treat kids in community equally, remembering that "kids are different" so we do not "tag them as future criminals, but reach out to them as future citizens."

In the courtroom: we need to lower or eliminate entirely mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses.  We need to invest in alternatives to prison, which can save taxpayers thousands each year.  Congress should pass a sentencing reform act this year.

In the cellblock: notes he will be first sitting Prez to visit a federal prison on Thursday, and I am going to shine a spotlight on this issue.  People in our prisons, though they have made mistakes, they are also Americans and we need to "increase the possibility they can turn their lives around."  If somebody in the midst of imprisonment recognizes the error of their ways, we have to make sure they are in a position to make the turn.  We should not be tolerating overcrowding, gang activity or rape in prison.  "These things are unacceptable!"  I have asked my attorney general to investigating to overuse of solitary confinement.  Prisons shoudl train people to find a job, not train them to be more hardened criminals.

UPDATE: The Marshall Project provides here a review of key passages from Prez Obama's NAACP speech on criminal justice reform. It sets up its review this way:

Whether or not you agree with President Obama about the need for criminal justice reform, it is undeniable that the speech he delivered in Philadelphia on Tuesday to the annual convention of the NAACP broke new ground.  Many presidents have spoken before, and some with great ardor, about law and order.  But no sitting president has ever publicly spoken at such length and in such detail as Obama now has about the persistent problems of crime and punishment in this country.